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SPEECH 



WENDELL PHILLIPS, ESQ., 

Before the 

COMMITTEE ON FEDERAL RELATIONS, 

In support of the Petitions asking for a Law to 
prevent the Kecapture of Fugitive Slaves, 

IN THE HALL OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATITES, 
Thursday, February 17, 1859. 



PHONOGRAPHIC EEPOET BT J. M. W. TEBEINTON. 



BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY R. F. WALLCUT, 
2 1 C o r n h i 1 1 . 

1839. 



la BxoliAB^r* 
0»rB«ll UuiT. 



SPEECH 



Mr. Chairman, — Allow me to read the petition for 
which we appear : 

* To the Honorable Senate and Honse of Representatives 
of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts : 
The undersigned, citizens of Massachusetts, re- 
spectfully ask you to enact that no person, wlio has been 
held as a slave, shall be delivered up, by any officer 
or court. State or Federal, within this Common- 
wealth, to any one claiming him on the ground that 
he 'owes service or labor' to such claimant, by the 
laws of one of the slave States of this Union.' 

That petition, Mr. Chairman, lies before you, it is 
said, with some fifteen thousand signatures. Some 
of these petitions you will find endorsed by the gen- 
tlemen who head and send them to you, with a state- 
ment to this effect : ♦ I could have got almost every, 
or every legal voter in the town, if I had had the 
time or the leisure to have circulated this petition 
more widely ' ; and, in a few of the towns, we are 
assured that every legal voter, or three-quarters, or 
two-thirds of them, have signed this petition. 

I understand, from the remarks of Mr. Higginson, 



[Rov. Thomas "NV., of Worcester, Tvho preceded Mr. 
IMiillips,] that some objection has been made to -what is 
called orj^anized effort in this matter. I am not aware 
of any orj^anization, but if there were, I should not be 
ashamed of it. "SVhy have not the minority a right to 
organize as well as the majority? I know no reason, 
■why you, sitting in this hall, wielding the character 
and resources of the State, representing, as you say, 
a majority, with that statute-book for your expres- 
sion, have a right to organization, to presses, to funds, 
to a system, and that we, a minority, endeavoring to 
create a public opinion that shall change that statute- 
book, have not a right to use the same means. 

I do not shrink from any charge of organization. 
AVlien our forefathers began to resist the British gov- 
ernment, they organized committees, clubs, compa- 
nies, governments, institutions of all kinds. I have 
never lieard it charged as a fault upon the Whigs of 
1775, that they did not fight single-handed; that 
they organized ; that they had committees ; that they 
corresponded ; that they issued circulars. We take 
now, reverently, from the trembling hand of History, 
the very circular which Sara Adams sent out from 
Boston, to array the public sentiment of the Colony 
in favor of independence, and worship it. AVho shall 
say, to-day, that men, also seeking to marshal the 
State in behalf of liberty, have no right to cir- 
culars, to organization, to a system ? I scout the idea. 
AVho is the mocking wrangler that denies our right 
to organize, to pay agent8,and send them out into every 
town and school district in the (Commonwealth r If we 



can do better than the majority, we have a right to do 
it. It is no objection to any movement that it is sys- 
tematic and organized ; if it be so, it is all the better. 

As to the doubt whether that petition represents 
the public sentiment of the State, you know, gentle- 
men, as well as I do, that it does represent it. You 
know as well as I do — and you do not need our evi- 
dence to assure you of the fact — that you cannot find 
one respectable man in a hundred who is ready to 
look his fellow-citizens in the face, and declare, * I 
mean to help the slave-hunter in catching his slave.* 
Let some trading office-seeker or shameless hound 
say so, and the universal shrinking and loathing of 
the community show in what an infinite minority he 
stands. You know that when, bolstered by office, 
tempted by salary, or bribed by ambition, here and 
there one man can be found ready to say, ' I should 
like to see a slave- hunt, and join in it ; the Fugitive 
Slave Bill ought to be executed ' — you know well that, 
bred in Massachusetts, and vaunting himself as loud- 
ly as he may, not one in ten can stand fire, but when 
you bring him face to face with a fugitive slave, he 
shrinks from his own principles. 

Now, all we ask, substantially, in this petition, is 
this — that you shall organize the public sentiment of 
Massachusetts into a statute. There will be, in this 
Senate and House, not one-tenth part ready to hold 
up their hands and say, ' We ourselves are free to 
execute the Fugitive Slave Bill.' I do not believe 
that one-tenth part of your joint bodies will be found 
ready to do it. Then why should you, as a Legisla- 



turc, hej^itate to say, 'That which each one of us 
slirinks from doing, shall not be done'? Ought not 
tlie law to represent public opinion r AVe have, some 
of xis, an awful idea of law, as if it were some 
granite pillar, around which the floating particles of 
liunian life aggregate themselves as iron filings round 
the magnet; we imagine that it is an oak, rooted; 
that no one can touch it ; that we are all mere incidents 
of it ; whereas law is as fluid as anything else. As 
Emerson says, Law is a mere memorandum, stating 
that yesterda)' a certain body of men thought so ; and, 
in effect, the voice of that statute-book simply is, 
• Living men ! what do you think of me to-day ? 
Your fathers thought thus yesterday ; what do you 
think to-day r ' AVe ask you to answer that question. 
The people of this Commonwealth are disguste4 with, 
conscientiously opposed to, and hate, the hunting of 
the fugitive on our soil ; and we ask you to put on 
the statute-book that Avhich every man sa\s by his 
own hearth-stone, and would be ashamed to deny. 
We come to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 
Mr. Iligginson alluded to the request we make to- 
day, as running singularly parallel to the long line 
of her history. Are you aware that this State, which 
you represent, was the first sovereign State, so far as I 
know, either in Europe or America, that abolished 
negro slavery, and that when she did it, she abol- 
ished it immediately and unconditionally ? In 1777, 
the people of Vermont met in an informal conven- 
tion, not recognized as a government, and ado])ted a 
coublitution that abolished slavery. They were not 



recognized as a body politic until 1791, But in 
1780, — the first date, so far as I know, in all histo- 
ry, where a distinct political sovereignty acted upon 
the question, — Massachusetts, by the first line of her 
constitution, placed there by Judge Lowell, for that 
piuyose, distinctly, immediately, and unconditionally 
abolished slavery ; and I have a manuscript report of 
a case by Chief Justice Gushing, acted upon immedi- 
ately subsequent, in which he quotes these words as 
immediately abolishing slavery within the State. I am 
aware, of course, of the gradual extinction of white vil- 
lenaige by various forms of State action. And I remem- 
ber the ground taken even on negro slavery by the 
CoiirtSy first of France, and then of England. But 
Massachusetts, I believe, was the first recognized sov- 
ereignty to abolish negro slavery by solemn act. It 
is therefore with good reason that we now ask you, 
a Massachusetts Legislature, to occupy that same van 
to-day. I think we have a right to claim it of such a 
government. 

Why do we ask it, gentlemen ? We ask it for this 
reason, that within the last few years, we have sent 
nearly four hundred fugitives from Massachusetts. 
We did not dare to advise theni to stay. We could 
not take it upon our consciences to ask them to un- 
dergo the risk of remaining under your laws. What- 
ever we might have done individually, we could not 
ask another man to risk his liberty. Within a few 
years, nearly four hundred, probably many more un- 
known to us, have quitted this Commonwealth. Now, 
wiiQ are these fugitives ? They are n^ en andwopaen, 



w]jo have shown a better title to liberty than we have, 
for we were only born free ; they were born as free, 
essentially, though under slave laws, and, taking life 
and danger in their riglit liands, have vindicated their 
title to freedom by enduring perils that make the blood 
curdle even to hear. Brave men and tender women, 
feeling the breath of hounds upon their naked limbs, 
bearing musket shot in their still bleeding llesh, risk- 
ing death by angry floods, on frozen rivers, by starva- 
tion, in boxes, on railroad cars, deep in the hold of 
heavy laden ships — mothers bringing the little child's 
body who has sunk to death in their arms — daughters 
flying from a fate worse than death, — these showing 
forth a manhood which only the highest hours of his- 
tory can equal, — at last set foot upon the soil of this 
Commonwealth. Is there any nobler exile that the 
State can welcome ? Is it not enough to shame a 
Massachusetts man, that such men and women, the 
noblest blood of the earth, are not safe under her laws ? 
Can a man be blamed for wishing that the statute- 
book should welcome and protect them, instead of 
obliging them to avoid the Commonwealth ? In IG-il, 
our fathers, just landed, proclaimed that Massachu- 
setts had open arms for all exiles, all fugitives from 
tyranny and oppression ; » to such,' says Bancroft, 
• she offered a free xcclcome and aid at the public cost. 
The nation, by a special statute, made the fugi- 
tive and the persecuted the f/uests of the Common- 
wealth.'* 

* If any btkaxgi^rs or people of other nations, pro- 
fessing the true Christian religion, shall fly to us from 



9 

That, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, is the civiliza- 
tion which you represent. It is in the spirit of that 
statute, it is following the great constitutional move° 
ment of 1780, that we ask your action on that petition 
to-day. We want you to go further than Vermont 
does — we want you specifically to enact, that any per- 
son seized, or in custody in this Commonwealth, by 
virtue of any process under the so-called Fugitive 
Slave Act, shall be liberated by habeas corpus, issuing 
from the Supreme Bench of this Commonwealth. We 
ask you, in distinct words, to set at nought the un- 
constitutional enactment of the United States ; and I 
will proceed, as briefly as possible, to tell you on what 
ground we place our request. 

My colleague [Mr. Higginson] has asked the ques- 
tion, whether this is a constitutional request. He 
meant constitutional in view of the United States 
Constitution. In the first place, gentlemen, I shall 
step belund the United States Constitution. I remem- 
ber that you, — Massachusetts, — were a sovereignty 
before the United States existed. Massachusetts is 



the TYRANNY or OPPRESSION of their persecutors, or 
from famine, wars, or the like necessary and compul- 
sory cause, they shall be entertained and succoured 
amongst us according to that power and prudence 
God shall give us. 

Every person within this jurisdiction, whether ^?^- 
hahitant or stranger, shall enjoy the same law and 
JUSTICE, that is general for this jurisdiction, which we 
constitute and execute one towards another, in all 
cases proper to our cognizance, without partiality 
or delay.— iHaAS. Utaiutes, 1641. 



10 

not to mc, whatever it may be to you, a mere bob to 
tlie kite of the Constitution of 1787. Massachusetts 
is no private corporation, under the great National or- 
ganization. I claim more of you than that. You 
•were a government in 1G30 ; of that living thread I 
take hold. God planted you a civil society. Our 
fathers came here to set up a government. They did 
80 ; and you exist as its representatives. "We do not 
address you, — the Legislature of Massachusetts, — as a 
subordinate Committee of the United States Govern- 
ment. "We address you as the civil society of Massa- 
chusetts, planted by the children of the Mayflower 
and the Arabella, and existing here to-day a civil 
government. As such, as a civil government, we re- 
mind you of 5'our obligation before God, to « execute 
justice between man and man.' No matter that one 
man calls another man his property, and, pointing to 
a parchment, claims your aid in holding liim as a 
brute ; we remind you of your own Avords, ' all men 
are born free,' and that the sovereignty which claims 
submission, OWQ^ protection. You tell us in reply to 
that claim, • We have fettered our broad sovereignty 
by agreeing to the Constitution of the "United States.' 
"We deny your right. You tell us, • The unlimited 
sovereignty of the Old Colony, bound to execute jus- 
tice between man and man, we have put away by the 
so-called slave clause.' We deny your capacity to do 
it. We assert that you sit here as the legislators of a 
sovereign State. If anybody, cither by you or before 
you, has agreed to limit that sovereignty by an un- 
holy compact, it is not binding, and you have no 



11 

right to regard it. Civil government, it is stated in. 
the preamble of onr Constitution, is *a voluntary as- 
sociation, a social compact.' So it is ; but compacts, 
when they become civil governments, have a peculiar 
character. 

This girdle of earth which you call Massachusetts 
can have but one such corporation in it. There may 
be a thousand banks in Massachusetts ; there may be 
a hundred temperance societies ; there may be any 
number of manufacturing corporations ; they may 
make their own by-laws, and establish their own fun- 
damental principles ; but civil government is necessa- 
rily exclusive — there can be but one within a certain 
space of land. From that flows this principle — every 
man on that soil has a certain right and claim in regard 
to that civil society. God has placed him there, or 
he has exercised his free will in coming there, as he 
had a right to do. We have no right, because we 
were born on the soil of Massachusetts, to shut any 
man out of it. Who gave us anj' such right ? 

If, then, civil government be a corporation necessa- 
rily exclusive, a certain tampering with the interests 
and rights of every man residing on this soil, then 
follows the fundamental principle of jurists, that 
these corporations are bound by the laws of God, 
which they have no right to violate ; for God has 
given certain inalienable rights to each individual of 
the mass, and no vote of the mnjority can take those 
rights away. They cannot say to a man, as a mere 
civil corporation may, a bank for instance, 'If your 
moral sense does not approve of this provision of our 



12 

chnrter, you need not come under it ; we, whose moral 
sense says *Aye ' to it, will come under it ; you are 
not obliged to.' The majority of Massachusetts are 
not competent to say to one 8inq;le man on tlie soil of 
the State, * We have violated your inalienable and 
natural ri ^hts, and meant to ; if you do not like it, 
go ! ' There is a law above this, which says, 'All 
your provisions in this kind of corporation must be 
within the girdle of right ! ' I know no authority 
but Thomas Paine — except the present Democratic 
party — that has denied it. In 1791, Thomas Paine 
published liis 'Ilights of Man,' in which he lays it 
down as a fundamental proposition, that what a whole 
nation chooses to do, it has a right to do. All other 
jurists have always laid down the principle that a 
nation has no right to do, however large the majority, 
that which is unjust. 

Now, from that principle, I am going to deduce 
this : A negro stands in this Commonwealth ; he has 
come here, and chooses to reside here. We have no 
right to say he shall not. God gave him the right to 
live and move, and choose his residence, wherever he 
pleases. This government assumes the great prerog- 
ative, and with it the great responsibility, of civil 
society, which says to him : « Give up your right to 
self-defence. You shall not fall back upon your nat- 
ural right as a human being ; Ave have instituted 
courts ; we have ordained laws; we have set up in- 
stitutions ; we call ui)on you to surrender your ex- 
treme riglits as an individual, and allow yourselves to 
be protected according to cur institutions.' They 



13 

have a right to say that ; that is what civil society, 
as an ordinance of God, has a right to claim ; but the 
correlative duty remains. When you have claimed 
your right to say that, the burden rests upon you efll- 
ciently to protect that man, whose hands you tie, 
whose moral and natural rights, as an individual, you 
fetter. This is the responsibility wliich civil society 
assumes by virtue of its constitution and nature. It 
undertakes to protect each individual to the utmost, 
and to do him justice, no matter how small the right 
which Is violated — no matter how great the peril 
which protecting him incurs. 

The logic is inevitable ; the link is iron. No man 
can vindicate that statute-book on any other princi- 
ple of morals. I put it fearlessly to any man who 
sits in this House, under free institutions, whether I 
claim any more than the nature of the contract justi- 
fies. You say to the fugitive slave temporarily with- 
in this Commonwealth, * Put down that pistol ! 
Chain those arms to your side ! AVe do not permit 
violence in our streets. If a man hinders you, there 
is the Court ; if a man assails you, there are the po- 
lice ; if you have need of protection, refer to us.' He 
says to you, ' I claim as a man, pursued by an armed 
enemy, and myself forgotten by the law, to set at 
nought your civil society.' You say, * We will hang 
you if you do.' I grant the right to hang flows from 
the doctrine that vests civil society with its sovereign- 
ty ; but it follows from tliis, tliat the power wliich 
claims to hang is bound to protect. The man whose 
hands you tie should be covered with the segis of the 



14 

Commonwealth, and you nre bound to see that he suf- 
fers no injustice from any other man, within or with- 
out your jurisdiction, so far as you have the physical 
force to prevent it. This noble rii^jht and function 
Geneva asserted and exercised; receiving the hunted 
reformers within her walls, and for centuries, with 
only a hand's breadth of territory, protected them from 
the rage of three kingdoms. Massachusetts, in her 
feeblest hour, protected the judges of Charles the 1st 
from the fury of his sons. 

If you say to me, in reply, * Our fathers swore, in 
1787, that when we had tied that man hand and foot, 
•we would surrender him,' I say, there issues from the 
throne of Infinite Truth the veto which says to you, 
legislators, to civil society, « If you exist, execute Justice 
between man and man.' (Applause.) I appeal to you, 
therefore, as the civil society which our fathers plant- 
ed, Avhich has never yet ceased to exist, which the 
labors and trials of half a dozen generations perfected 
in this Commonwealth ; I claim of you, as legislators, 
by virtue of that civilization, that you set your foot 
"upon the unholy compact which is not binding upon 
the conscience, and cannot rightfully fetter the action 
of any thing that undertakes to exist as a sovereign 
State under God's government. 

I will not insist upon that point any further, for I 
suppose I have made it as evident as is necessary to 
this Committee. It disposes at once of all constitu- 
tional objections. Whatever you may tell me of 
your sovereignty, I criticise it in that guise. You 
cannot get away from your responsibility. Massa- 



15 

chusGtts existed ; she was set up ; she is in full being ; 
she undertakes, as a sovereign State, to retain so 
much of that sovereignty as binds the citizen and 
every inhabitant of her soil to submission ; and there- 
fore there rests upon her the burden of that principle, 
that she is bound to protect the citizen. It does not 
lay in any one of your mouths, — you who undertake 
to execute the high functions of a sovereign State, to 
write laws on that statute-book, to erect your State 
Prison and your gallows, — it does not lie in any of 
your mouths to say, * We have fettered our hands by 
a compact.' You have no right to do it ; it is not 
binding upon you to-day. The gallows which you 
erect to-day, if you obey the Fugitive Slave Act to- 
morrow, is murder ; the giiilt of blood is upon your 
individual consciences, for God's law does not recog- 
nize that as a State which abjures its high functions, 
and pleads its own base contracts and gainful treaties, 
as reason for not * executing justice between man and 
man.' Logically stated, our claim is this : 

Any organization which undertakes to levy com- 
pulsory taxes, to define and punish crimes, to forbid 
or liniit the natural right of self-defence, and to take 
life, is a GoverntnetH in the strictest and fullest sense — 
and may justly be held to all the responsibility that 
attaches to sovereignty under God's law. 

No Government has a right to violate the laws of 
justice or of God. 

Every innocent individual who will obey all just 
and necessary laws may choose his place of residence. 

No Government can rightfully drive such a cue 



16 

from its territory, or refuse to exert its whole power to 
protect him from injustice and oppression. 

No body of men have any such exclusive title to 
a specific territory as authorizes them to drive from it 
otliers willing to live in peace under just laws. No 
plea of danger to their interests gives them a right to 
drive the hunted fugitive from their borders. The 
smallest and weakest States have nobly met this obli- 
gation in most trying times. 

The fugitive slave is such an individual— and our 
State cannot rightfully plead any compact or agree- 
ment to surrender him, or allow him to be seized ; 
since she has herself, by solemn act, recognized the 
eternal truth that ' all men are born free ' — showing 
that she sees the truth, and is therefore hound to obey it. 

If any such parchment contract exists, it is void for 
immorality, and from incapacity of the contracting 
parties to make such a compact. 

But to come down lower. I leave that question, 
and ask, suppose you are under the United States 
Constitution, is the Statute we ask for constitutional 
under the Constitution of 1787 ? "Well, gentlemen, I 
am perfectly ready to allow that there have been ex- 
treme theories of constitutional law, which make this 
claim of the petitioners unconstitutional. I am per- 
fectly willing to allow — and I never wish the com- 
mittee for a moment to forget it — that Mr. Webster, 
in the great debate with Ilayne, claimed a stereo- 
typed fixedness for constitutional law which shuts out 
the possibility of the action we ask. No doubt of it, 
gentlemen. But theory is one thing ; practice is 



17 

another. Let me read you an extract from a speech 
which that same Mr. Webster made in I80I, (at Capon 
Springs.) After he had stated, in a previous part of 
the speech, as strongly as possible, his views in regard 
to this very question of the obligation of the North, 
under the Constitution, to return fugitive slaves, and 
you may therefore suppose him to have had that point 
specially in his mind, what does he say r - 

• To preserve that Union, we must observe, in good 
faith, the Constitution and all its parts. If that Con- 
Btitution be not observed and its provisions set aside, 
the whole of it ceases to be binding. It would be ab- 
surd to suppose that cither the North or the South 
has the power or the right to violate any part of that 
Constitution, and <hen claim from the other observ- 
ance of its provisions. If the South were to violate 
any part of the Constitution, would the North be any 
longer bound by it ? and if the North were deliberate- 
ly to violate any part of it, would the South be bound 
any longer to observe its obligation ? How absurd it 
would be to suppose, when different parties enter into 
a compact for certain purposes, that either can disre- 
gard any one provision, and expect the other to ob- 
serve it !' 

This, gentlemen, is the practical application of the 
doctrine of constitutional obligation, by the jurist 
himself. He lays down the principle, that we are to 
obey the Constitution at any rate ; he says that the 
slave clause is in the Constitution, and therefore the 
North is bound to obey it. Then, he asks — he is talk- 
ing of the obligation of the South to obey the Consti- 
tution, if the North has violated it— allowing the 
North has violated the Constitution, is the South 



18 

bound to keep it? Not a bit of it! If two parties 
make a compact, and one breaks it, the other is not 
bound by it. That is the practical doctrine of Daniel 
AVebster. 

I had once the honor of a conversation with John 
Quincy Adams on this very subject. I asked him if 
lie ever intended to assist in sending back a fugitive. 
' No,' \vas tlie reply. • How,' I inquired, • do you 
reconcile that with your oath to support the Consti- 
tution of the United States?' * O, the South has vio- 
lated the Constitution,' "Whenever there comes an 
actual conflict of opinion, the stringent theory of 
obedience cracks, and these statesmen acknowledge 
the common law principle, resting on a higher and 
broader basis, that the violation of a contract by one 
of the parties absolves the other, to a great extent, if 
not entirely. 

So Mr. Adams, in 1S19, when Missouri was about 
to be admitted, (as reported in his Jifc, by lion. Josiah 
Quincy,) declared that Congress, by their sanction of 
the Missouri Constitution, by admitting that State 
into the Union without excepting against that article 
which disfranchised a portion of the citizens of Massa- 
chusetts, had violated the Constitution of the United 
States. ' Therefore, until that portion of the citizens 
of ^Massachusetts whose rights were violated by the 
article in the Missouri Compromise should be redin- 
tegrated in the full enjoyment and possession of those 
rights, no clause or .article of the Constitution of the 
I'liited States should, within the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts, bo so understood as to authorize any 



19 

person whatsoever to claim the property or posses^iion 
of a human being as a slave ; and he would prohibit 
BY LAW the delivery of any fugitive upon the claim of 
his master.' 

That was the opinion of Mr. Adams in 1819 ; and 
throughout the whole argument, (which I will place 
in the hands of the Committee,) Mr. Adams claimed 
that the Missouri Compromise was a violation of a 
fundamental provision of the Constitution on the part 
of the South, and by that violation, Massachusetts 
and the North stood absolved from all obligation to 
any clause of the Constitution which they choose to 
repudiate. You will see, gentlemen, that we are sail- 
ing under very good captainship— John Quincy Adams 
for captain, and Daniel Webster for mate. If you do 
not like our constitutional law, tr> the edge cf your 
critical sword upon them, and not upon us. 

• If I were a member of the Legislature of one of 
these States,' said Mr. Adam.s, — (why, gentlemen, we 
stand here, as the Spiritualists would say, the mediums 
of John Quincy Adams) — ' I would move for a de- 
claratory act, that so long as the article in the Consti- 
tution of Missouri, depriving the colored citizens of 
the State (say) of Massachusetts of their rights as citi- 
zens of the United States within the State of Missouri, 
should subsist, so long the white citizens of Missouri 
should be held as aliens within the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts, and not entitled to claim or enjoy, 
within the same, any right or privilege of a citizen of 
the United States.' 

Thus, gentlemen, we put ourselves upon this 



20 

ground. If the constitutional clause is binding:, in 
your view, then, necordin<j; to very excellent constitu- 
tional authority, the unlimited violation of the Con- 
stitution of the United States, on the part of the 
Southern States, frees you from any moral obligation 
to the observance of that clause. You Avill not con- 
tend, in lSo9, that Mr. "Webster in ISol, or Mr. Adams 
in 1819, had stronger instances to cite of the violation 
of the Constitution than ^^■Q have to-day. I have 
only to recall to your minds Texas, Missouri, and 
the Fugitive Slave Bill itself, and the agents of this 
Commonwealth kicked out of South Carolina, and the 
door barred Jjy a statute making it a penal offence, 
punishable in the State Prison, for Massachusetts to 
send a citizen to that State to bring a case before the 
Supreme Court for the defence of one of her own 
colored seamen,— I have only to point you to these 
repeated acts of aggression, to bring the case we are 
considering entirely within the rule laid down by 
Adams and Webster. I might cite also the language 
of Joshua R. Giddings, in a letter to his constituents, 
covering the same legal issue, but it is not necessary. 
But I go further than this. I claim of you, if you 
please, this statute, even if it be outside of the Consti- 
tution ; and I claim it in this wise : Bancroft says in 
his volume, 'American law is no result of individual 
wisdom ; it is the growth of necessity,— the growth 
of the hour.' The majority make the law for to- 
day ; our written constitution is, as it were, an elastic 
mass — we stretch it to suit our purposes. Through- 
out the line of American history, that is law which 



21 

the people acquiesce in. You know that when 
charter, the original of which rests in your Secretary's 
room below, Avas brought over from England to this 
country, the lawyers of Great Britain said it was a 
fraud ; that the corporation of Massachusetts Bay 
could exist only in London ; that it was not a legal 
transfer. Gov. AVinthrop let the lawyers say so ; he 
and his associates brought the charter here, and estab- 
lished Massachusetts, and the acquiescence of the 
Stuarts and the people made it law. 

If you open the Federalist, (No. 40,) you will see 
that Madison confesses that the Convention of 1787 
had not strictly a rightful authority to frame a Con- 
stitution. North Carolina and Rhode Island, while 
they remained outside the new constitution, complain- 
ed of this high-handed violation of the articles of 
Confederation, by the votes of nine States only, when 
it was expressly stipulated that the Confederation 
should be * perpetual,' and not altered unless with the 
consent <of the Legislature of every State.' Still, 
Madison claims that the Convention was justified in 
making a new constitution when sent only to amend 
an old one, and in setting aside the * perpetual* con- 
federacy by the vote of nine States, if such a course 
was ' calculated to accomplish the views and happi- 
ness of the people of America.' After a while, 
Rhode Island and North Carolina submitted, the 
people of the thirteen States acquiesced. That Con- 
stitution which you eulogize and baptize almost into 
a sacred emblem, was a bastard in 1787. It had no 
right to be, according to the confession of the men 



who made it. Its only claim to be a legal in3trumont 
is tlie acquiescence of the people. 

So, also, when Louisiana was purc]ia«;ecl, in ISOl, 
JofTerson said it was plaii\ly unconstitutional, and 
that the people ouj;ht to be asked to make it legal by 
the addition of a new clause to the Constitution. His 
friends said, « Let us risk it ; the people will acquiesce, 
and that will make it law.' The people have acqui- 
esced. Florida and Texas have followed Louisiana, 
and Mexico and Cuba, and the rest of the continent 
will follow in time. 

I claim, therefore, this a;? the wcU-recognizefi prin- 
ciple of the nation's existence, that any act which the 
organized authority sanctions, and the people acqui- 
esce in, is the law of the land. The whole of onr law 
grows out of that principle. You cannot vindicate, 
on sacred charter principles, one single act in the 
normal history of the States ; there is not a constitu- 
tional act that is clean. Wo claim that principle in 
our behalf to-day. We want the State of Massachu- 
setts to risk this statute, even if it is ourside of the 
Constitution. We ask her to say to the Union, • You 
have been enacting laws for sixty years ; we are go- 
ing to try our hand at it. Massachusetts is good at 
patents; we do not intend other States shall have a 
monopoly in this.' By what right do the Republicans 
of the Senate sit side by side with the Senators of 
Texas to-day, — every one of them pledged to the 
principle that Texas has no right in this Union, that 
it was an illegal act that brought her in, and one-half 
of them pledged to this day to the doctrine that we 



23 

have no right to acquire territory ? By the right and 
in virtue of the principle, that public acquiescence 
makes its law. 

Now, we claim that principle of you, to-day. Shall 
it be everlastingly said that * Despotism does great 
things illegally, and Liberty does nothing according to 
law ' ? Let us, for once, vindicate the right of Liberty, 
in this free scramble for power, to get her share. We 
ask you, if it be unconstitutional, to say to the people 
of the Commonwealth : * That is Justice ; that is 
■what the heart of the Commonwealth demands ; we 
will enact it, and see whether the people of Massachu- 
setts will say " Amen ! " ' If they do, it is the law of 
the State ; and then we shall not have to say, with our 
faces veiled in shame, to the proud specimen of man- 
hood, the William Tell or Wallace of a grander strug- 
gle than the Swiss or Scotch hero ever knew, when 
he touches the pavement of Boston, ♦ There is no pro- 
tection for you in Massachusetts.' If you will give 
us that law, we can put these representatives of the 
noblest heroism and the sublimest courage the world 
has ever seen, — the apostles and saints of this modern 
Liberty Crusade, — in this State House or in old State 
street, and say to them : « Flash back your name on 
these telegraphic wires, which a son of Massachusetts 
invented, to your master at the South, tell him you 
have chosen to reside in Boston, and bid him wel- 
come to the news.' (Loud applause.) And the in- 
vention of law which makes it possible for him to pro- 
claim this, will outshine the invention of the tele- 
graph which girdles the globe. (Renewed applause.) 



24 

But the answer will bo, ' The Supreme Court will 
8ot aside the law.' I do not know that. You passed 
a liiiuor bill some years ago ; tlie Supreme Court set 
it aside. The Legislature, by one giant stride, enact- • 
cJ a ten fold stronger law, and the Supreme Court 
did not set it aside — tliey leapt ahead of it. That de- 
cision does not come from the law books ; it does not 
come from between calf-skin : it comes from the pub- 
lic opinion of the Commonwealth, which has set the 
vanes of that legal spire in the right direction, since 
your first attempt at legislation. (Applause.) I 
trust I have a due respect for the Supreme Bench of 
Massachusetts, and for those who hold places upon 
it ; but they are men ; they are not stereotyped cast- 
iron machiiics, speaking by steam. They are warm 
flesh, living blood, and there must circulate through 
their veins the life and vitality of the Commonwealth. 
Enact that bill, and if it is set aside, enact it again ; 
and if it is again set aside, enact it a third time, and 
be certain that when the statute floats forth from the 
arches of the Capitol, if the people do not make it ef- 
fec tual through the Supreme Court, they will make 
it effectual over that Court ; for the humanity of the 
people will be represented by the institutions of Mas- 
sacliusetts, in some form or other. (Applause.) 

Then, again, geiitlemen, I have another point to 
present, and it is this : After all, is there any such 
slave clause as that we are talking about ? I am 
Bometimes reminded of that story in old times, of the 
first light-house that was built at Alexandria — a 
marble column, flashing its light, five hundred feet 



25 

high, on the blue sky of the Mediterranean. Ptole- 
my, -who filled the throne of Egypt, bade the archi- 
tect, Sostratus, write on the frieze — 'Ptolemy, to the 
gods, saviors of seamen.' And Sostratus chisseled, 
apparently, the name of the reigning king. But after 
a while, the crumbling plaster and frail lime dropped 
out, and beneath, in the eternal marble, the centuries 
saw carved, ' Sostratus, son of Deiphanes, to the 
gods, saviors of seamen.' So with that Constitution. 
Our fathers tried to plaster it over, so some men say, 
with slavery, — with equivocal phrases, with immoral 
compacts, with compromises that no man dared ut- 
ter, but each man hid in his heart ; and the claim of 
some jurists, to-day, is, that the crumbling plaster has 
dropped out, the ' untempered mortar ' is gone, and 
there flashes forth from the eternal purpose of the 
Constitution the fiat — ' Thou shall not return unto his 
master the servant that has escaped from his master unto 
thee /' (Loud and prolonged applause,} 

Let us hope, in God's name, that it is so, Mr. Chair- 
man ; and if it be so, — and I am told a large propor- 
tion of those who occupy these seats believe it is, — 
enact your legal theories into statutes. If you come 
here believing, as we are told you do, that there is 
no slavery in the United States Constitution, then I 
tell you that the law we ask, instead of being uncon- 
stitutional, is the purest and best constitutional law 
in the world, and it is j'our duty to enact it, since 
wicked men are perverting your noble Constitution 
to cover such awful iniquities. There are men who 
sit in these seats, anti-slavery men, who, when we 



fanatics nsk them, 'ITow can you bow beneath that 
oath to the C^onstitution ? ' reply, ' It is high as heav- 
en ; it is broad as the pillars of the universe. There 
is no slavery there. "We cannot hud it.' Very well; 
then vote for this law ! 

If there is an abolitionist in your Legislature who 
says, • I hate slavery ; I will never help execute the 
Fugitive Slave Act ; I would cut off my riglit hand 
before I would do it ; but I have bound myself by 
an oath not to pass such a law in this Legislature, — 
I ask, ' By what right do you sit here ? Anti-slavery 
man, lover of liberty, by what right do you bind 
yourself by an oath not to execute your high func- 
tions in behalf of justice r By what right do you as- 
sume power which you allow forbids you to do what 
you acknowledge to be just, and obliges you to aid in 
doing what you confess is infamously base ? Put 
your hat on your head, and go out of that door ! You 
cannot vindicate that oath as a moral. Christian, 
anti-slavery man. You have no right to assume a 
power, and oust others from it, which you cannot use 
for the protection of the fugitive.' These are the two 
horns of the dilemma. Those of you, legislators, who 
say, ' We can come here, because we do not find 
slavery in the Constitution,' vote for that law ! If 
there is no slavery in the Constitution, the Fugitive 
Slave Bill is a monster even worse than on the other 
supposition. If there is no fugitive slave clause, then 
the Sims case and the Anthony Burns case were the 
most monstrous enormities ever perpetrated in the 
city of Boston, worse than if we suppose there is such 



27 

a clause. Go as far as Pranklin advised in the first 
petition to Congress on this subject, * Go to the ex- 
treme verge of your constitutional power to put down 
this system.' If you have got the power, execute it. 
If you turn round and say, ' I have not got the 
power,' then I ask you how, as a man, a Christian, an 
anti-slavery person, can you vindicate your right to 
sit here in the Legislature, when you have bound 
yourself not to legislate justly, but both passively and 
actively aid in wrong-doing ? 

Tliese, gentlemen, are the grounds upon which I 
claim this law. I claim it, first, (without regard to 
the Constitution of the United States,) of the sove- 
reignty of Massachusetts, existing, under God, as a 
civil society, and bound to protect its citizens, whom 
it restrains into obedience. Then, in the second 
place, I claim it upon the universally recognized 
principle of constitutional law, as laid down by Ad- 
ams and Webster, that the repeated violations of the 
Constitution by the South make it, in fact, non- 
existent. In November, 1845, in answer to a letter 
soliciting his opinion on the constitutionality of a law 
of Congress, retroceding Alexandria to Virginia, Mr. 
Adams replied : < I have no hesitation to say, I hold 
that act unconstitutional and void. How the Supreme 
Court of the United States would consider it, I can- 
not undertake to judge, nor how they would carry- 
it into execution, should they determine the act un- 
constitutional. The Constitution of the United 
States, " Stat magni nominis twibra" ' — (is the shad- 
ow of a great name.) 



28 

Mr. Giddings, speaking later, says: 

* "Without further remarks, I repeat that Oliin is now 
a party to nosub.sistinfij Uiiioii ; to our people, therefore, 
l)(,'loiigs tlie prcroj^'alive of dictating the future policy 
of tlie State. Tliey may, if they choose, demand of 
our Legislature the passage of a lav.', enabling them 
to express tlieir views in regard to the propriety of 
entering into a Union with Texas ; or, as we are now 
dissolved from all connection with the slave States, 
we may remain free from all further alliance with 
tliem. We may form a Union with such of the other 
free States as sliall prefer a union with freemen, and 
discard all further political association with the insti- 
tution of slavery.' 

This is the extreme practical doctrine derived from 
a violation of the Constitution on the part of the 
►South. You know it is the Southern doctrine. The 
Southern States, with Calhoun in the van, claim it 
as the basis of their doctrine of constitutional law, that 
a violation of the Constitution, on the part of any 
party under it, absolves the rest. I can claim, there- 
fore, that they, at least, have no right and are not 
competent to object to any legislation on the part of 
Massachusetts which does not regard the Constitution 
of 1787. 

Submit this project of a law, if you please, to the 
people. If you do not wish to enact the law distinct- 
ly yourselves, enact it conditionallj' ; put it to the 
people of Massachusetts, and say, if you please, that 
unless it secure a two-thirds vote, it shall not be- 
come a statute. You know that the people of the 
Commonwealth will rush to the ballot-box, nine out 



29 

often, if you will give them the chance, to place that 
act upon the statute-book of the State. (Applause.) 

Then, again, we ask you to make your law more 
decisive, even, than that of Vermont ; to specify the 
danger, and instruct the Supreme bench to issue its 
habeas cm-pus, and arrest any process under the so- 
called Fugitive Slave Act. We ask you to do it 
now. In Albany to-day, gentlemen, the petitioners 
who sent that very petition to the Empire State, of- 
fered to send before them two eminent lawyers of New 
York to do what I am doing here ; but the Commit- 
tee said to them, «We ask no appearance; we are 
ready to report the bill.' (Applause.) They asked 
for no argument ; that statute of Vermont, made 
perhaps more stringent, this New York Committee 
is ready to report. 

Now, gentlemen, we ask you to let Massachusetts 
take her proper plate in the van of this movement ; 
and if I may allude to the political constitution of the 
Legislature, I claim it of you, as sitting here under 
the profession and avowal, that you do not believe 
there is any fugitive slave clause in the Constitution. 
Mr. Sumner, from his high place in the Senate, has 
again and again avowed his belief that there is no 
legal claim for any fugitive slave within any of the 
free States ; and he has again and again avowed his 
purpose to defend that principle, if health returns to 
him, upon the floor of the Senate. If there be no such 
clause, then we claim of those who think so the enact- 
ment cf the law we ask ; and if any of you cannot so 
use your power, we ask of you that you should step 



30 

out of that door, nnd let those "«ho feci that such a 
use is free to them take your places. 

I do not know, gentlemen, that I have anything 
further to say that is essential on this topic. I will 
place what seems to be a certified copy of the law of 
Vermont, and these extracts from Mr. Webster and 
Mr. Adams, wliich I have quoted, before the Com- 
mittee. 

It is no answer to my request to say, that you will 
grant a jury trial, that you will hedge the citizen with 
such safeguards that none but a real fugitive can ever 
be delivered up. That is not the Massachusetts we 
want, and not the Massachusetts we have a right to 
claim. If the South has violated the Constitution re- 
peatedly, palpably, avowedly, defiantly, atrociously, 
for her own purposes, — to get power in the govern- 
ment, to perpetuate her system, to control the nation, 
— we claim of you that you should exercise the privi- 
lege which that violation has given you. AVe claim 
of you that you should give us a Massachusetts worthy 
of its ancient name. Give us a State that is not dis- 
graced by the trial, in the nineteenth century, in the 
midst of so-called Christian churches, of the issue, • Is 
tins man a chattel r' We will not rest until it is de- 
cided as the law of the Commonwealth, that a human 
being, immortal, created by the hand of God, shall 
not be put upon trial in the Commonwealth, and re- 
quired to prove that he is not property. It shall not 
be competent for the courts of the Commonwealth to 
insult the civilization of the nineteenth century by 
asking that question, or making it the subject of evi- 



31 

deuce and proof. Give us a law tantamount to this : 
the moment a man sets his foot in Massachusetts, he 
is free against the world ! (Loud applause.) 

Can the image of God be owned and sold ? What 
a question for a Christian republic to try I Decree 
that no Court sitting in Massachusetts shall ever en- 
tertain the question whether a human being can be 
property. He is a man, therefore he is free. Provide 
not only that no Court which you set up shall enter- 
tain that question, but that no Court sitting on your 
soil shall insult Heaven by trying such an issue. 
"What your own Judges may not do, shall not by any 
man be done within your limits. We read, gentle- 
men, of days when to say, ♦ I am a Roman citizen,' 
opened prison doors and disarmed lawless power. 
Earn for our Commonwealth a nobler fame. Let 
history tell that on our soil to say, ' I am a man,' un- 
locked every chain and shrivelled unholy parchments 
to ashes, while over the emancipated head flashed the 
mailed arm of the Commonwealth with its protecting 
legend, * Sub Libektate quietem.' 



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